The interest in improving the sustained use of wearables goes beyond employer programs, according to the Annals of Internal Medicine study. It also applies to data collection for precision medicine initiatives to better target interventions.

Quantifying the effectiveness of wearables to increase activity within the framework of a payer or employer wellness program has been the source of more than a few studies. Can financial incentives from these groups also steer participants to the desired outcome? Will participants be sufficiently engaged to use these wearables over a long period of time? What are some of the characteristics of the longer term users? This area has been a topic of interest for Dr. Mitesh Patel, an assistant professor of Medicine and Health Care Management at University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine and the Wharton School as well as director of Penn Medicine’s Nudge Unit. But the interest in improving the sustained use of wearables goes beyond employer programs, according to the Annals of Internal Medicine study. It also applies to data collection for precision medicine initiatives to better target interventions. In what Patel said is the largest study of its kind to evaluate the stickiness of wearables in a step counting program, 4.4 million Humana wellness program members were invited to take part. Of those, 55,000 actually downloaded the relevant app for the study, which was published in Annals of Internal Medicine. Researchers analyzed data for a two-year period from 2014-2015 and tracked when participants first activated their activity tracker, how frequently the device was used in the first six months following activation, average daily step counts and sociodemographic characteristics, according to a news release from Penn. In a phone interview Patel said he was struck that although 0.2 percent used the devices in year one, that rose to 1.2 percent in year two. In six months, 80 percent of the people who started using the device were still using it.

When it comes to software, Garmin Connect is one of the most comprehensive platforms out there. While the app and web dashboard might lack in intuitiveness, they certainly don’t lack in detail. With the latest update, Garmin has now thrown in a few more features.

The first is social sharing. Motivation is very important...

Olivier Janin's insight:

It is strange to me how major brands, like Garmin, Apple and Google, are communicating around there Data Visualisation and Social Sharing features as if they were new.

Historical innovators, like Jawbone, Nike Fuel, Runkeeper, Runtastic, already released such features with a strong UX/UI designs, and it was in 2010.

It looks like Fitness and Health Data tracking services are trying to convince the consumers with the same value proposals, trying to find the key arguments to generate a solid growth and a massive adoption.

MIT's Researchers Tuka AlHanai andMohammad Mahdi Ghassemi built an algorithm that can analyze speech and tone. This data is crunched to work out what emotion a person is roughly feeling for every five second block of conversation.

Olivier Janin's insight:

MIT's students used a Samsung Simband (Samsung SDK) and crossed voice and Heart Rate signals treatment.

Fitbit was punished this week on Wall Street by shaving off 33% of the stock value this week. This was mainly due to investors disappointment with lagging sales. Last year sales increased by 92% in the fourth quarter and expectations were released that sales were going to remain steady compared to last year which was not well received in the Stock Market. Only on Wall Street, would maintaining 25% of the Fitness Tracker market and the same strong sales numbers as last year be bad news.

Snapchat's first hardware product is coming to the market sooner than anyone expected. The company said tonight that it will sell Spectacles, a set of connected sunglasses that record 10-second snippets of video, for $130 sometime this fall. It also rebranded itself as Snap, Inc. — a reflection of a fact that the company now makes more than its flagship app, co-founder and CEO Evan Spiegel told the Wall Street Journal.

Olivier Janin's insight:

Will Spectacle Sunglasses be main stream ? I would say potentially yes (let's check it on Summer 2017).

Anyway the product already made the job as a marketing asset to support SNAP brand repositionning.

A Company should worry. It's the Swedish company that released "Narrative Clip" in 2014, this small camera that automatically take a picture every 5 minutes to generate your personal diary within a community ecosystem.

On the parent side, the mobile App helps you track your kids positioning all day long..

SRP : $59

Olivier Janin's insight:

Off course, we all want our kids to be safe.

But psychological studies seem to suggest that parental monitoring of children can cause a number of developmental problems: lower self-esteem, antisocial behavior, indecisiveness, or anxiety, among others.

Hurdl is a text-based platform that creates one-to-one communication between attendees and hosts. On November 2 at the 50th Annual Country Music Association Awards in Nashville, a new tech product debuted that offers a different way for planners to communicate directly with their attendees.

Olivier Janin's insight:

Event sharing features are definitely interesting to explore in terms of Application fields.

The worldwide smartwatch market experienced a round of growing pains in the third quarter of 2016 (3Q16), resulting in a year-over-year decline in shipment volumes. According to data from the International Data Corporation, (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Wearable Device Tracker, total smartwatch volumes reached 2.7 million units shipped in 3Q16, a decrease of 51.6% from the 5.6 million units shipped in 3Q15.

The Doppel uses vibrations to mimic your heart rate and get your hyper-focused. The founders don’t know why it works, but it does.

Olivier Janin's insight:

The Doppel team findings are interesting in terms of haptic effects. Their product features positioning on the feedback loop is bright. Now, it misses a bridge with the biometric sensing of the wearer to adapt to any situation.

Jawbone, the richly valued maker of wearable gadgets and wireless speakers, appears to be on increasingly shaky financial footing as it struggles to pay vendors and keep inventory in stock.

Jawbone abruptly ended its relationship with the customer-service agency NexRep earlier this month after Jawbone failed to make payments, according to an internal NexRep email viewed by Business Insider.

Olivier Janin's insight:

Is Jawbone disappearing ? Its slow fade-away is unfortunate for a company that delivered good wearable actimeters, UX and App.

For any businesses involved into wearables / digital health / connected well-being, It's time to learn from Jawbone failure.

2013 launch big failure.

I early adopted Jawbone UP after its 2013 reload, and I found the product very compelling, particularly the UX/UI on iPhone.

They missed the turning point of automatic activity detection, passed by Basis (the first to make it) and then by Fitbit.

They were the first to deliver an insightful coaching system

I think they lost their traction with a too fast pacing in their UP iterations (2, 3 and 4 in three years).

In 2015, I bought an UP4 and used it during 5 days. I was very disapointed by the ergonomics and gave up.

When Nintendo revealed that a Pokémon AR game was in the works last September, it also mentioned a companion wearable designed to notify players when they’re close to a Pokémon or a Pokéstop.

The Pokémon Go Plus was slated to arrive at the end of this month, but Nintendo has now announced that its launch has been pushed to some time in September. The Bluetooth-based device, which can be pinned to your clothing or strapped on to your wrist, will go on sale for $34.99.

Olivier Janin's insight:

Will Pokemon GO be only a passing trend ?

Being involved into the Gaming Industry crossing with Digital Health, here are my 50 cents about Pokemon Go.

I am a casual gamer, regularly playing mobile games and AAA console games.

Pokemon Go mixes Geolocalisation and Augmented Reality. It can be categorized as an "Alternate Reality Game". Pokemon Go is not the first mobile game that mix Geolocalisation and Augmented Reality ("AR") (eg. Ghost Busters App in 2012.) But none of its predecessors have reached a so fast growing phenomenon.

We must mention "Ingress" - edited by Google and developed by Niantic Games - that is a great successful game with geoloc but no AR (the Pokemon Go geolocalisation DB is based on Ingress) So what makes the difference ?

3 reasons are sustaining Pokemon Go sucess :

the strength of an historical licence makes the App induced Nintendo's nostalgia from our teenagers experiences. Pokemon Go is turning us into Kidults, recovering childish pleasure while the world is convulsed by violence and bad news.

the narrative coherence: "catch em all" is the moto of Pokemon universe. This game is purely coherent with the original storyline. Its concept is very clear and compelling to anybody who knows the trading cards or the TV series that have been our life

the gameplay itself : free to play, generous, unlimited, social, perfectly using the AR which is quiet new for the mass.

Since 2006 and the first Nike-iPod actimeter, I have been using / testing all the Quantified-Self solutions available on the market. None of them was enough gamified to engage me into a strong and durable behavior change.

I don't know if Pokemon Go will succeed in making people regularly workout for a long period of time. But what I'm sure of is that Fitbit or Withings should definitely envision to partner with entertainment companies to make their experiences more Playful.

That's the EntertRainment vision I follow with my team to deliver App and UX that triggers self-care behaviors.

Deepak Chopra, a leading figure in the alternative health movement, is moving into the mobile app business with the launch of Jiyo. Chopra and his co-founder..

Olivier Janin's insight:

A very interesting step forward from Deepak Chopra and his associates. Jiyo is going further by considering all of our tracked data on a new angle. The wellness through holistic data driven calculation. I like it. Be more your better self !

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